Folding Paper in Half -- Twelve Times You can't fold a sheet of paper in half more than seven or eight times, no matter how large the sheet or thin the paper may be. How often have you heard that statement? Is seven or eight folds a reasonable rule of thumb for paperfolding in general?

Splitting Terrorist Cells How can you tell if enough members of a terrorist cell have been captured or killed so there's a high probability that the cell can no longer carry out an attack? A mathematical model of terrorist organizations might provide some clues.

Perfect Magic Cubes A magic cube is a three-dimensional array of whole numbers, in which each row, column, and body diagonal adds up to the same total. A perfect magic cube is one in which the diagonals of each vertical or horizontal slice through the cube also sum to the same value. Mathematicians are intrigued.

Megaprime Champion The catalog of humongous prime numbers has a new entry -- the champion prime (2^20996011 - 1), which has 6,320,430 decimal digits. It's the largest known prime number and the 40th Mersenne prime ever found.

The Cow in the Classroom There is a difference between mathematical exercises disguised as episodes of everyday life and real mathematics applied in the real world. It's a distinction that's not always apparent in the mathematics classroom.

Cool Rationals One of my more distinct recollections of math class involves the decimal representation of rational numbers and the discovery of wonderful patterns among those digits. A new paper finds fascinating new patterns and provides some numerological explanations.